Thursday, October 01, 2009

The Ripples - George Clark

Here's a guy who has almost every cartoon skill wrapped up together: great compositionEach individual shape is fun and designy, yet it fits neatly within a complex group of shapesJust the shape of this car and window is beautiful on its own. Then it is filled with a beautiful grouping of flowing organic yet constructed charactersHis poses all work together. They don't seem just pasted next to each other like some of those modern flat cartoons I've been making fun of. This is all thought out to make each object part of a whole composed picture.He is a master of negative shapes between the flowing poses. The spaces between are as pretty as the forms they separate.And then, like some other rare comic strip artists' work, all the individual panels are composed against each other to make the whole age look planned and designed.I suspect that George Clark was a big influence on Owen Fitzgerald - and therefore Mort Drucker. Look their stuff up for similar approaches to composition, flow and design.next: later Clark and pretty girls

I love how these samples display looseness ( line of action), structure and composition. Normally all that detail would be a big ol' mess, but Clark makes it work. I also like the body language in the male characters. Bring up more like this, will ya John?

John - I'm not an artist, and never will be, but I've learned enough from your blog to at least feel a sense of understanding, to grasp why the good stuff works and the bad stuff doesn't. This post is a perfect example of why I come here. The amount of time and effort you put into educating both aspiring artists and mooks like myself is much appreciated.